Back around 2003, before I’d even taken a first stab at blogging,
I’d already found a favorite foil: Dan McGrath.

At the time, McGrath was then about
halfway into his decade-plus tenure running the Tribune’s star-crossed and
unfailingly biased sports section. At the Cubbies Convention in January, Ron
Santo predicted that the team would win 100 games. As everyone knew, Santo was
many things, foremost among them a consummate Cubbies homer, so to take to the
bank anything the team announcer and future Hall-of-Famer said was well, you
know, cute, quaint, or perhaps heartening. But foremost: It’s a Ron Santo prediction about
the Cubbies!

Santo, star-crossed no more.

Natch, McGrath took Santo’s prediction Ph.D. seriously, enough so to assign
a story about “how it could happen” to beat writer Paul Sullivan, and it ran over the fold along with a heady, season-schedule graphic. Never mind that the North Siders had won 100
games just five times in the then-127 years of the franchise or that they’d hit
the century mark just once in the past 94 seasons heading into 2003. The entire
piece read with the hopefulness of … a Cubbies fan, not a responsible writer or
objective editor.

While the Cubbies would win just 88 games in 2003, that flaccid
number was enough to take the NL Central, where the team would take a 3-2 lead
on the Florida Marlins before a colossal collapse that’s winceable even for a non-fan to
recall some nine seasons later. And this McGrathian embarrassment--the 100-win prediction detail was no "goof" or back-page filler, mind you--was by no
means the worst or most offensive of his 12-year tenure helming the most
influential sports entity in the Chicago market.

Here it is, a decade later, and, somehow, McGrath is still an
active media member—more visible than ever as a writer, in fact—surfacing at the rival Sun-Times, whose membership standards apparently are swaying
by the day. [To be fair, I have found McGrath a much better writer, generally, than he is
an editor. His writing across sports is solid, qualifying him right upon hire as the best writer on the Sun-Times staff.]

And once more, I am forced to scrape my jaw up off the ground
after some of McGrath's more inane ramblings, which this time around includes a bonus treat—a completely
voluntary and unnecessary reference to his tenure at the Tribune, by way of dissing the White Sox.

McGrath set the stage of his column nicely, with “curiosity”
compelling him out to USCF to see the first-place White Sox (well, not exactly)
take on the phenom of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Mike Trout (there, that's more like it).

Then, McGrath affixed a garrulous countenance and went full-on
grump, excoriating White Sox fans for committing the act of a wave.

No argument there, Dan. “The Wave” is, indeed, sheer foolishness.

But McGrath posited his criticism in much the way his Tribune sports
section did lo those years ago. Somehow, in McGrath’s mind, foolish acts of fan
frolic—like The Wave—are only committed on the South Side.

Surely, this man is joking—or his fading memory escapes him.

The premise of his piece sets White Sox fans up as a straw
man—they claim to be “all about
baseball,” but really, they’re not. As McGrath posits:

OK, but in all the years I’ve been going to Wrigley Field, I’ve never seen the wave done. Not once. Just saying.

To that, Dan, I'll retort, shocked: You must be joking.

I won’t even get into the reputation for sheer boobery and boozing at
Wrigley Field, or the notion that Cubbies fans “don’t care” about the game. For
the prices paid and inconveniences weathered, I’d sure hope every fan entering
the gates there cares and pays plenty of attention.

[The last "Field" link above was written by McGrath's Cubbies beat writer, Sullivan, in 2006. That was during McGrath's Tribune tenure as editor, so I guess Dan must have been off that day and failed to read the sports section at all to catch up on what he'd missed.]

Worse, McGrath not only attempts to take the piss out of the
notion that White Sox fans are more “purist,” he resorts to referencing his insipid tenure
manning Trib sports, saying that attendance (!) was the reason for his paper’s
discrepancy in coverage between White Sox and Cubbies.

At least that's an answer, albeit a lousy one.

But still, let’s pretend that attendance, rather than wins (the South
Siders averaged four more wins per season during McGrath’s Tribune
tenure, while averaging 11,000 less fans per game) or any other factor should determine
how a paper covers sports franchises. How disingenuous is it (modest, the
former sports editor might call it) to assume that the relentless promotion of
a Tribune company asset in the pages of the Tribune had nothing to do with the discrepancy in ballpark attendance?

In the 11 years leading up to the Tribune purchase of the Cubbies,
North outdrew South by an average of just 2,272 fans per game (and not as a
means of excuse, but in that time span Bud Selig reached an agreement to buy
the White Sox and move them to Milwaukee, a deal the AL owners struck down, and the White Sox also were rumored to be off to both Seattle and Denver
before Bill Veeck raced to the rescue in 1975). And in the 11 years before
that—call it the last era of stability for Chicago baseball, a stretch unaffected by either franchise relocation or new ballpark construction—the White Sox
outdrew the Cubbies by 2,486 fans per game.

So all evidence points to the White Sox and Cubbies essentially
drawing equally prior to the Tribune ownership. But to complete the cyclical argument, McGrath’s admits attendance drove Tribune coverage of the competing baseball teams.

Photo research by Brian Dykes.

Funny, when I was in contact with Dan a decade ago, he didn’t use that fairly
reasonable (yet) disingenuous argument. I wrote conscientious (if sarcastic) letters to Dan, from my stead less as sportswriter than as a Tribune subscriber. My hope, truly, was that coverage errors might be corrected and the strength of the
paper would improve. The two most memorable responses from Dan? The first told
me to “stick my letter where the sun don’t shine.” A second informed that I
should “put away the crayons” I was apparently writing with.

Those aren’t bad retorts, I suppose—if you’re having an argument
at a sports bar. When you are the man charged with outlining coverage between
two competing and contentious teams in town, helming the most powerful media entity in Chicago, it’s inappropriate to say the
least.

Not to mention this delicious factoid, dug out by my friend Jeff
McMahon and the dean of Tribune watchdogging: During the 2005 and 2006 regular
seasons, during which the White Sox won and defended a World Series title (to
the tune of a 90-win season), the Tribune published nearly 1,400 more stories
mentioning the Cubbies than the White Sox. That’s just about two articles per
day—and assuming more coverage in-season, we can estimate the true number
in-season to be more like three or four more Cubbies articles per day than
White Sox over both summers.

I guess we can just chalk that up to the 5,700 more fans per game
your paper helped put into the seats over those two seasons, eh, Dan?

McGrath's tenure at the Tribune, senselessly referenced even today, amid writing at a competitor that was otherwise worthy of highlight, represented a wave of its own: A wave of bias. And that wave, years past McGrath and Tribune ownership of the Cubbies, refracts even today.

About Poetry in Pros

Brett most recently logged a couple of beats at CSNChicago, first following the Blackhawks and covering their first Stanley Cup win in 49 years, then shifting to the South Side and the White Sox.

His sportswriting career began right before the turn of the century, first as an editor for Basketball News and later editing Basketball Digest and Bowling Digest. He has written for Baseball Digest and MLB Trade Rumors, as well as the Chicago White Sox and MLB World Series programs, as well as Slam, Hoop, Inside Stuff, Courtside, Rinkside, and numerous NBA game programs. He has been featured in ESPN the Magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Baltimore Sun and Crain's Chicago Business, and on Comcast Sports Net, NBA-TV, NHL.com, MLB.com, WLS-TV, WGN-TV and the BBC. He's also written features for the NBA Finals and NBA All-Star Game programs.

Brett is the author of the essential baseball reference work 'The Wit and Wisdom of Ozzie Guillen.' When Ozzie first saw the book, on Opening Night 2006, he cracked wise to those in his manager's office, asking, "What's wisdom?" To which owner Jerry Reinsdorf replied, "Don't worry, Ozzie. You don't have any."

A lifelong Chicago sports fan, the first game Brett attended was on Dec. 4, 1976, watching the Bulls snap a (still) franchise-record 13-game losing streak and setting in motion the playoff run that would come to be defined as the Miracle on Madison. At Brett's first White Sox game on June 4, 1977, Richie Zisk of the South Side Hit Men homered over the roof at Comiskey Park at a time when the feat was as rare as a no-hitter. Brett's first Chicago Bears game was on Oct. 7, 1984, when Walter Payton broke the all-time NFL career rushing mark.

More than anything, however, Brett is a baseball and a White Sox fan, having seen hundreds of games over his lifetime, including a walk-off grand slam by Carlos Lee to defeat the Cubbies, the infamous Michael Barrett sucker-punch on A.J. Pierzynski, a then-season record home run by Oscar Gamble in 1977, Bobby Thigpen's 50th season save in 1990, and the classic Blackout tiebreaker win over the Twins in 2008. There have been many pilgrimages to see the team, including a September 1990 drive up from Texas to see a final series at Comiskey Park, an April 1991 flight to watch the otherwise-unmentionable first game at the then-New Comiskey Park, outrunning a snowstorm to see the White Sox be whitewashed in a late September game at Kauffman Stadium, and a jaunt down to the Hovering Sombrero in 2005 to catch the club take on the Tampa Bay Rays.

His highlight as a fan is, of course, witnessing the entire home run of 2005 White Sox playoff victories, including the two extraordinary wins over the Houston Astros at USCF that spurred a World Series sweep. More recently, he took in Mark Buehrle's perfect game in 2009, during which Brett made the boldest prediction imaginable—not of an eventual perfect game, but a Josh Fields grand slam! Brett has watched games in every major league city.

Brett graduated from Texas Christian University with a Journalism and English degree and came thisclose to finishing his English master's at Kansas State University while teaching composition to disinterested agribusiness majors. He's won a number of writing awards in areas as varied as poetry, fiction, features, news reporting and opinion writing. Brett lives in Florida with his incomparable wife, Angelique.

Poetry in Pros Trivia

Now that you know a little bit about Poetry in Pros writer Brett Ballantini, see how you score below. True or false, Brett:

Believes that the ABA saved professional basketball.

Borrowed the title of the first draft of his master's thesis from a Camper Van Beethoven song.

Co-founded and played in a band called Ethnocentric Republicans, who once shared a bill with 15-minutes-of-fame grunge rockers The Toadies.

Considers nachos piled high with jalapenos as his go-to concession food.

Gave a Crunch bar to then-Nestle spokesman Shaquille O'Neal before their first interview together in Milwaukee. Later saw an empty Crunch bar wrapper in Shaq's locker.

Gave three photographs from his personal collection to the Chicago Bulls for their "walk of fame" leading to the locker room at the United Center.

Had four front teeth.

Has appeared in one movie, in which he was murdered when Albert Einstein slammed his head in a door.

Has appeared on the cover of a magazine with a circulation of 100,000. As Santa Claus. Bowling.

Has attended just three games in Wrigley Field as a fan. One was to see the Chicago Sting.

Has been a vegetarian for 30 years.

Has been doused by Bill Veeck's outfield shower in two different decades, in two different White Sox parks.

Hasn't cried over a game since Tito Landrum crushed that homer off of Britt Burns in October 1983.

Has worked for at least seven publications that are no longer in business.

Kissed the Minnie Minoso statue in the outfield concourse at Sox Park on the cheek as a good-luck gesture before Game 1 of the 2005 World Series.

Caught a foul ball while covering a preseason game from the roof of Tempe Diablo Stadium. On his birthday.

To Wit:

"When I build a fire under a person, I do not do it merely because of the enjoyment I get out of seeing him fry, but because he is worth the trouble. It is then a compliment, a distinction; let him give thanks and keep quiet. I do not fry the small, the commonplace, the unworthy."